Hello all, as Ed had before, we had 9 people the other night. I thought I'd put up Katies and Chris' writtings along with mine. We did the exercise where everybody would write a prompt and somebody else write a response to it. Warning, if you read this you will also read some comments that I made on Chris' that are shown in brackets. Ignore if they annoy you.

The prompts were shuffled and Katie got "You find your childhood friend's body in the woods. What do you do?" Her response:



The leaves, moist in morning mist, a twig beneath my boot crunched and snapped, and I flinched. April 17th, 5:24 am. The air, thick with more than dew disturbed me, skin on my arms, prickling. Something had happened here, for never had I before felt such a presence in these woods.

*Slosh*. My foot sank quickly into a murky puddle as I let out a surprised yelp. Slowly, I withdrew my sole from the muck, only to find the brown leather had turned a scarlet, saturated color, rank with an indescribable odor. Horrified, I recognized the smell, the sickening, gore-ish color.

Then I recognized the pale face of my dear friend Nick staring up at me. His steely blue eyes without pupils and gaping mouth chilled me deeply. Quivering, I felt every muscle within in me quake as I looked upon his blood-soaked corpse, once so lanky and alive with youth. His white-blonde hair was stained the huue of strawberry jam- the mere thought of food made me gag.

Without thought, I fell to my knees, still shaking in disbelief. Thin, bony fingers brushed the tiny specks from his cheek, but no reaction to my touch. Red, burning streams soaked my collarbone as the raced from swollen irises, unblinking beads of blue. A voice unfamiliar to me crawled out of my throat, speaking a few solemn words.

"Better you than me."



Chris' prompt : "The passing of a generation"



It was ever dirty old man's nightmare. <> Romeo Rickenbough ran those two words through his head until he couldn't think of anything else. But the curvy blonde waitress still looked at him like a judge sizing up a serial killer [I kind of like that simile]. Romero always knew that psychic brain implants would cause problems like this: when you read the thoughts of everyone around you, you find that people think about sex. A lot.

"I'll have a nice stack of old nuns...I mean pancakes" Romero wheezed out, his voice starting to go raspy from one to many cigarettes. He knew talking to the waitress was unnecessary. Since she already knew what he wanted for lunch. The waitress just stared. Her eyes pulsed with psychic energy [ that makes an interesting image], and her head throbbed and pulsed like something out of a 50s invasion movie. Romero didn't understand how kids these days found that attractive. He assumed that was common, and youngsters just got used to it. But still, he could never imagine going to prom with a girl who looked like a character from "Attack of the Saucer Men"

For the millionth time that day, Romero thought how quiet it was in a diner full of psychic people. He wondered if this is what his parents felt like when he and his friends had started texting on their blackberries all the time. Because he was one of the last non-psychics on Earth, Romero had no idea what other people were thinking, but he was guessing it had something like to do with how small his head was. Damn kids.





Library's closing in a few minutes so I'll post mine when i get home.

Another Rough Draft

I jotted this down the other day and I am tweaking it. I was really saddened by witnessing the elderly couple across the street sell off their belongings and move out of their dream home after fifty years there. Just doesn't seem right, although they are not the first or the last people to do this.

The old couple across the street

I see the old man shuffle to his car
taking baby steps with his walker.
When I see his ten minute ordeal
to get behind the wheel, I tense,
someday I know I am going to
have to go over and pick him up off the ground

It's spring, they are having a yard sale
they are moving to assisted living
we go over and
pick through their lives

The wife is sitting in the office
next to the back porch
surrounded by knickknacks, plates,
coffee and tea cups
vases, a wooden carving of a dancing
couple bought in pre-Castro Cuba by her parents,
an old radio, musty dioramas bought by the husband
in Japan in the 1950s and candlesticks.

How long have you lived here, we ask.
"53 years."
Young and married, buying a house in South Park
in the 1950s, back when you could still hear cows
in the morning in this part of Charlotte.
How far away was 2009 and frailty?
I know they had dreams, they laughed
they ate and drank,
now life is just getting into your car
without falling down.
It's nursing homes and two lifetimes'
accumulation of what is now junk to sell off
or give to Goodwill.

I see an old Japanese-made 35mm camera.
"My husband took slides with that camera in Japan
when he was in the army,"
says the wife.
I ask where the slides are.
They are in the room behind her
"I'll buy them," I say.
"I'll check with my husband and call you."

They continue the sale the next weekend
I go over and ask about the slides.
I'm told the old man won't give them up.

I understand that.
Sure, sell the tables, the beds, the silverware and the beautiful house,
but those slides, those slides
are a part of his youth,
before marriage
before responsibility.
Some things you hold onto until you kick off
losing them would be too much like dying.

Howdy

Hey, just wanted to thank everyone that came to the meeting tonight. Nine people is a lot of fun. I also wanted to let everyone know that anybody can post anything to this blog. It doesn't have to some writing or even writing related. Heck, half of my posts are links to XKCD comics. Do whatever the heck you want. Within reason, of course.

Shark Poetry Contest

Now, here is a contest you can, um, sink your teeth into.

Meeting Tomorrow Night

Remember. Tomorrow night. 6 pm. Meeting. Morrison library. Green tea. Bring something to read. Bring a book to share.

A Rough Draft

I had some fun with this. I decided to describe what was on my desk. Don't forget we are meeting this Thursday, by the way.

The gauzy curtain
the neighbor's red truck
the pine tree that leans over his house
our garden, struggling to start
the chain link fence that encloses nothing
a white jeep, a beat up basketball goal
with a new net
I know there is a bird bath and bird feeders
to my right
My desk is a converted table
with Godzilla figurines
fifty year old Japanese dioramas
I bought from the yard sale
the old couple across the street held
an internal hard drive in a plastic case
now it's external
a scanner
my laptop
two speakers that sat in my trunk for a year
and they work!
an external CD/DVD burner I bought because
the one that came with my laptop never worked
a dictionary
bubble envelopes to mail music
a pencil holder
a USB hub
old slides I bought off eBay
Bob Dylan's new CD
a roll of packing tape
old bills and junk mail
a game manual for Civilization IV
a DVD from the library
toenail clippers
a ceramic candle holder
a miniature dachshund eating his breakfast
the clock radio plays the Diane Rehm show
they are discussing taxes
Itunes wants me to to update
I just want to upload this new
Bob Dylan album to my Ipod
The firetruck goes by
flying threw at almost 50
lights bouncing off the homes
siren shredding the morning like paper
soon after crawling through
back to the station the lights on the back
illuminating the road behind

Meeting This Thursday

Just a reminder that we are meeting this Thursday. That's two days from now, you know. I talked to Mitch and she's going to be there so good times will be had by all. But that's only if you show up. Who be coming?

High Contrast

High Contrast
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

I don't know if this guy parked his Porsche in front of my car to be funny or if he just took the first spot he saw.

Fun With the Cell Phone Camera

scary cat
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

This is my orange cat, Gallagher, on the kitchen counter.

Call for Submissions

This website here is looking for creative writing by people born between 1973 and 1993. Hey, that's you! Well, not all of you. Most of you.

Rise of the Milky Way

This is too cool

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Thanks to the Bad Astronomy blog for the link.

Reasons to be a Scientist

If you missed it, Friday's XKCD is another doozy.

New Search Engine

Have ya'll heard about the new search engine called Wolfram Alpha? It's designed to give you answers instead of linking you to websites. I was messing around with it today and plugged my birthday date in. It will also compute fairly complex searches like largest countries by area in Africa. You can also compare different states or countries by entering them and separating them by commas. I did California, Michigan and North Carolina here. If you look near the bottom you can see it generated a graph comparing the population growth of all three states. I am going to use it for reference questions at work and see how it does me.

Summer Bookmark

Today I updated the bookmark that advertise our group. You can download it here. Feel free to print them out and distribute them to your friends and peers. If anyone wants to jazz them up feel free. I'm not very good at making fliers and bookmarks.

Meryl Streep Reading from Fahrenheit 451

Wow, I spelled Fahrenheit correctly on my first try. That's never happened before. But seriously, this is pretty cool.

Hey, hello. I don't think I've let you know Ed, but I do keep up with the blog. Now that I got my account sorted out here (again) and I was looking through a notebook when I was cleaning my backpack(s), I can post what I wrote for the writing exercise. I also have Katie's, (Sorry it took me a long time to post!!)

Our writing exercise required us to incorporate these following words into a piece: elephant, archetype, onomatopoeia, sizzling, dune, silver halides and bloop. Here's mine (and yeah I did clean it up)

As Larry was walking up to his room, he couldn't rid his mind of lens, silver halides (really Lauren? You had to pick that?), and film. He aso couldn't help see a peculiar image out of his hallway window.

It was a boy on his front lawn, playing golf while singing on top of his lungs:

"A bloop!! A bloop!!
A sizzling bloop!
On an elephants stoop!!
Running along a dune!!"

Larry could not nor did he try to find an archetyope for this boy. Instead, he found himself runningdown his house and slamming his front door, which made its own onomatopoeia, and made his way to the boy and started singing along:

"A bloop!! A bloop!!
A sizzling bloop!!
On an elephants stoop!!
Running along a dune!!"

And this is Katie's:

A youthful femnist photographer
Fashing sepia snapshots
Of nature's trembling wonders
Whose snappin lens creates a crisp
Nostalgic sound, a familiar
onomatopoeia
Click, zichk, bizz
Traveling endlessly to austere
Lands too far to see
A desert flower amongst
wind blasted dunes
Terra cotta elephants bathed
in clay to sheil from
sizzling summer rays, developed
dankly in silver halides
harsh seperation
black from white
Swelling ocean waves, fluffy
Clouds of pulsing jellyfish
bubbles of air pop,bloop, pop,snap
An underwater polaroid (I love this line --Luisa)
cloudy with soaked ceruleans
Her soft voice and steady hand
present the common archetype
of reclusive photographa girl
Albums of the Earth fade
with passing ages.

Katie, this is awesome. If I made any typing mistakes, please let me know and I'll edit

Dracula as it Happens

I've seen similar projects before but this is kinda cool. This blog is posting each journal entry from the novel Dracula on the corresponding day. It started yesterday, May 3rd. Think of it as a blog from the past.

Rule number 1 is: Don't Panic

Michael Swanwick has a write up on the flu thing on his blog. Is everyone washing their hands?